The Spy
by Clementive
Summary: [Modern War!AU Part of the Battlefield Series] When Temari is captured on the battlefield, she is interrogated by Sergeant Sasuke Uchiha from the Information Headquarters. Between lies and half-truths, what begins as a one-way interrogation becomes much more when they are both confronted by the ghosts of their brothers. SasuTema


_**[Modern War!AU Part of the Battlefield Series] When Temari is captured on the battlefield, she is interrogated by sergeant Sasuke Uchiha from the Information Headquarters. Between lies and half-truths, what begins as a one-way interrogation becomes much more when they are both confronted by the ghosts of their brothers. SasuTema.**_

_**Warnings: Mild violence and some gore (mention of a decapitation). This is a twisted kind of romance, maybe it's even pre-relationship? Anyway, this is why it's not tagged as romance.**_

* * *

Temari had a ritual.

First, the water.

Then, the scrubbing.

Temari watched as bright red swirled noisily down the rusty-red of the sink.

She hadn't seen working plumbing in years, since the war started.

The cold water jagged at her skin and black musk struck to it. Breathless, her heart pounding, she watched entranced, the water gouging and gurgling, twisted and red. Down, down the sink in its unblinking dark eye. Her hands were raw, but she couldn't withdraw them for the sink yet. She couldn't meticulously dry them while the screams still echoed, crawling up her neck, tugging at her ear.

Yes, her ritual dampened the promises of death and more blood.

Somehow, in those promises, there were the red of Gaara's hair and Kankuro's billowing laugh. There was death worming its way in her heart, her brothers' names as echoes, almost inaudible, and her kills. And her kills always played back in her mind, frame by frame, in detailed colours and outlines.

Her memories faded, the blood didn't.

First, the surprise. A curve of a mouth, eyes widening, and a sharp intake of breath.

Then, the precise gunshot that detonated and killed.

In that order.

She always followed the ritual, one step at the time as it left no room for anything else.

It left no place for any other ghost than the one about to face her.

No Gaara.

No Kankuro.

Just an anonymous death.

The water now ran clear.

Temari slowly shook the water off her hands and looked up from the sink.

The cupboards of the kitchen were hanging out of their hinges, the chipped paint crinkled. The pantry's door had been ripped off and the kitchen table axed down to splinters and dust. Someone had likely used the wood for fire.

The rest of the wooden structure of the house was also curved hollow and bleak, furniture missing in every room. Pieces of it whistled with the wind and the floor violently creaked under her weight. She smiled, meticulously drying her hands.

Everything was clean.

Everything was empty.

Temari slid her gloves back on. The leather uncomfortably stuck to her humid skin.

The faucets screeched high-pitched when she twisted them back, the rush of water dying. Temari reached across the counter where her ammunition pouch was, and fastened it back against her hip.

"What do you say, you and I go for a little trip?"

The damp bleeding head emptily stared back at Temari as she grabbed for its hair. The coldness unwound back inside her.

She worked best with ghosts.

"Sorry, you have no say in the matter."

Heads for Gaara and Kankuro's freedom.

For her brothers, Temari had followed her ritual more times than she cared to remember, and she always stood at the same place: blood dripped on the floor as she smiled coldly.

Gaara rarely smiled but Kankuro always laughed, she remembered, even if their faces had started to fade.

"It's a beautiful day though," Temari whispered. She talked to herself or the head, she never knew. It never made a difference. She yearned for things she couldn't have, a head full of dreams cut short. Cut off.

First, the water.

Then, the scrubbing.

She only knew this ritual now.

And each death accounted for its own shade of red. Again and again, like the way her past and present bent, struck out of course. They called her the spy, when each death branded her as the scrubber. Under, around her nails, there was dirt and blood and the skin always remained pinkish. It all made her harder, rawer.

As long as her brothers were safe.

She whistled softly, empty, her hand still tightening on the severed head's hair as she walked out of the abandoned house.

* * *

**The Spy  
_by Clementive_**

* * *

The sun was frosty white, perched low in the empty sky. It blinked dully, the world bleak, as empty.

On the ground, the snow had thinned, snapped in parcels of ice.

Temari advanced carefully in the forest, the head beating her hip. She puffed out white smoke. She quelled a shiver, pushing back a dangling branch.

She knew there were other people like her roaming the battlefields and bringing Orochimaru heads.

He owned them all, alive or dead. His realm expanded beyond the battlefield, in a trade of body parts, names of sentenced men and favours. Imprinted on her eyelids were blood and bones, piled up in pyramids spread across the battlefield.

But Temari always came back.

She would never fail her brothers.

Orochimaru surveyed Temari climbing down the hill with a faint empty smile. Her eyebrows were knitted together, her mouth quivering with promises she couldn't keep, words that became chants when she started talking to her brothers– the brothers, Orochimaru held hostage. She exchanged heads for a name, a head for more heads.

Crooked branches' shadows dancing across her face and her brothers' names were always firmly pressed against her lips.

Like they would reappear.

Like they could.

All the while, her gloved fist was still bloody from holding the head, holding on to her last hope. All about her were shreds; shreds of memories, shreds of clothes. Dark matted once blond hair stuck to her forehead gleaming with her hair's oil and frigid from the cold.

Orochimaru knew how ugly humans became when the war raged on, when commanders stop speaking of the end of the war. There would be no victory, only a headcount, a gigantic cemetery of fallen soldiers.

Orochimaru knew all humans fell during wars, especially if they didn't die.

Temari stopped, breathing in sharply. She untied the cloth from her hip with stiff fingers.

Temari never gave up hope. She didn't stop after one head, or the second, like most of them did. She was a broken girl, holding the fragile pieces of herself together against raging wind and a bomb streaked smoking sky. A broken girl fighting death, and war, while her guilt consumed her.

She approached Orochimaru, holding the head with her bloody glove.

He smirked, pushing himself off the tree.

The frozen earth squeaked beneath her boots and red dots dipped, then marked her stationary stand in an enlarging puddle. The cold crept up her legs with piercing needles. Orochimaru enjoyed making her wait.

Once upon a time, Temari wouldn't have been reduced to a spy, holding sawed off heads.

Once upon a time, she was free and happy with her brothers. She was someone and others said her name, touched her, and saw her.

Useless thoughts, they were all useless thoughts.

She ceased to exist when Orochimaru took her brothers.

She was a scrubber. She was a spy. She was a killer.

She wasn't a sister anymore.

And she knew the rumours; he experimented on life and death. He bred monsters. He made them, piece by piece, from dead and living bodies. She was haunted by the possibility she contributed to making monsters, but all these thoughts were silenced when she thought of her brothers.

So, Temari waited for a paper with a name under Orochimaru's unflinching gaze.

He tilted his head, his sharp tongue darting between his lips.

"Well, well, hello there."

His boots sank in the snow. Just as slowly, he bent down towards the head as if to greet it, but he never took his eyes off her.

"At this point, I'm vexed you don't enjoy this, girl. You're so good at killing."

"Let them go," Temari demanded weakly.

Orochimaru straightened back, smiling thinly. His skin appeared to melt on his bones as he sighed.

Temari steeled herself, her grip tightening around the hair of the severed head.

He was fast.

Orochimaru slammed her back against the nearest tree. She gasped. He leaned in close, his face more snake-like than human, while his nails dug into her neck. Her eyes widened as his tongue unrolled, wetting his lips, too long, too pointy. Pain and red spread, dripping down her neck, down her back, swarming under the fallen head. Breathless, she trembled and black dots danced across her vision while his eyes remained focused, a quiet ferocity piercing his gold pupils.

"This ends when I say it ends," Orochimaru muttered, watching her pupils dilated, her mouth parted by her laboured breathing.

Nothing amused Orochimaru more than breaking her, piece by piece. Owning her, piece of hope by piece of hope. She always came back and his body reacted, his teeth always inches from her neck, his nail buried in her flesh. Violently, he thrusted his knuckles into her stomach, tucking a piece of paper into her uniform before releasing her.

Temari fell on her knees.

Gasping for air, she gripped at the snow, crushing ice and dirt in her fists.

Swiftly, Orochimaru picked up the head lying on the snow.

"See you soon, Temari."

He disappeared between the trees, whistling an old tune from another war. At each of her quivering sob, his shoulder relaxed.

He whistled louder, the forest carrying back the melody to him, amplifying it.

She would come back.

* * *

Temari crouched behind a tree of a forest near the front.

She stuck her hands in her pockets, rocking back and forth to keep from freezing in the biting cold.

She waited. And waited. And thought of wheels and sand.

Temari came from a country which shifted with political winds, allying itself with strong forces when they had power and turning to others when they fell. In the farm of her childhood, the soil was arid and sandy, herbs ablaze under the sun, cracking under the sole of their shoes. The wheels of the mills turned and turned, hypnotizing. In politics like in harvest, her homeland followed strong wind. Since the beginning of the war, the wind had died, but the wheel of life and death kept spinning. There was a wheel of subsequent actions in killing, tearing up flesh. And there was no stopping it.

There was no stopping her.

Another head would need to fall.

A branch snapped behind her, boots screeched, someone panted, and her eyes narrowed with alertness.

"Oi, Captain! There's someone here!"

Temari clenched her jaw and looked up, reciting the circle of killings that never ended. She held up her hands.

She knew better than to speak now.

"Steady."

The soldiers forced her up, her arms violently pulled behind her. Temari breathed deeply through her nose. _Calm_. She needed to stay calm.

"I've my identification card in my pocket," she said slowly. "You'll see that I'm no enemy..."

"Shut up," a man ordered in a drawl, his face emerging above pallid smoke. His head seemed to hang above the ground. Around them, the dusk hit the hardened snow hard. "Half of my men have troublesome fake IDs. I found you in the woods, a tree could have farted it out for all I care."

"She has clean hands," the female voice reached hesitantly over her, and hands turned her briskly around.

Temari almost growled out in frustration, but the tip of a knife dug into her neck. She froze and her sharp eyes shifted across the half-hidden faces of the patrol. Two women and two men. She was outnumbered by more soldiers than she had expected.

Temari licked her dry lips.

"Interesting," Captain Nara Shikamaru lowered his cigarette, his eyes suddenly piercing.

There were marks on all of them circling her. Inside and out, they reeked of the battlefield, a dash of darkness and a pool of red.

"You read about any clean hands recently, Teacher?"

"She's a spy," the other man answered from behind her.

Shimakaru cocked his head on the side, his brown eyes dull once more. Temari didn't flinch, she looked up. The wind was pulling the clouds in front of the white sun. Every thing was white, blinding, binding her to this moment.

"I know. Now, we just need to know for which side."

* * *

"I'll tell you a story."

Sergeant Sasuke dragged a rusty chair in front of her jail cell. When he let it go, the loud echo jostled Temari awake. Staring at her unflinchingly, he sat on the chair and opened a black notebook on his laps.

Temari stirred carefully. Gritting her teeth, she arched her back, her neck stiff, and she forced the nonchalance in her frozen arms as she shrugged. She shouldn't be afraid, she kept repeating to herself.

They needed to trust her.

They needed to let her in.

Temari focused on the things surrounding her instead of the piercing dark glare of the man. There was a bucket of water before the smelly mattress and a second empty bucket one for her wastes. If she spread out her arms she could touch the other wall. With the flickering light, the bars of the cell coldly alternately gleamed and disappeared in the darkness.

"A woman wants to infiltrate a camp, so she lets herself be captured and now she's brought in. She thinks she's won... Then she meets me," Sasuke smirked, his dark eyes taking her all in. "Sergeant Sasuke Uchiha."

"Nice to meet you," Temari replied sarcastically.

"This won't be pleasant," he smirked wider.

Punished and forgotten, at the bottom of the Information Headquarters, Sasuke Uchiha always faced prisoners with one bullet in his gun.

Criminals had one bullet.

People you couldn't trust had one bullet.

'There's no redemption,' he always offered to his prisoners before their executions.

Sasuke had nothing left to lose, except one bullet.

So he never carried his gun, and he sat in front of prisoners like once a guard had sat in front of his cell. He always went thrice at the prisoners, and, each time he did, he thought of nothing but the day he killed his brother.

No exception.

* * *

"Which side are you on?" Sasuke leafed through the file without glancing up even though he had memorized every page, every line of her fingerprints.

Temari turned her head towards him, her face cut by the shadows of the bars of her cell.

Earlier, with the bucket of freezing water, she had washed away the grim from her face and hair. Sandy blond strands now curled at her ears, the rest of her hair still damp.

The stale air in her cell oppressed her, leaks of cold water still dripping down her back when she sat, and down her face when she slept. There was always a rattling sound. The coldness, the bareness of the cell folded into her skin. She felt raw. Exposed. Dangerous feelings in a dangerous place.

"You have my papers," she grunted and wrapped her arms around her knees. "I'm sure it says what I've already told the patrol that brought me in."

"Humour me: which side are you on?" Sasuke leaned back against the chair crossing his arms over her file.

"Yours," she said through gritted teeth.

"Which side are you on?" Sasuke repeated, cutting through the words she had barely formed.

She pinched her lips.

"I just told you-"

"No, you didn't."

They glared at each other.

"Then, there's no side, you goddamn fool," Temari growled out, looking away first. There were lies, but this was one of her truth. A scrubber rather than a spy. She belonged to no sides because she had no one.

Sasuke's face hardened when he unfolded his arms and reopened her file.

He leaned in, his elbows on his laps, her file between them.

Temari smiled disdainfully at him.

"Hn. I thought there was at least this side of the cell..." Sasuke pointed one finger towards his chest, his face already darkening because she was still smiling. Empty, but dismissing. "And this other side..." he continued, now gesturing toward her. "The filthy one."

"As I said, you're just a goddamn fool."

Sasuke felt the familiar anger burned his throat, and he willed himself not to clench his fingers. Not to rip page after page, uprooting a story he had heard too many times at the back of his mind. Anger meddled with hopelessness, his heartbeat deafening, and his mind spinning. She should see the limits, the harsh division between black and white.

She needed to choose a side, like he did.

Sasuke had learned the hard way how sides divided him from everyone. He had thought for too long it was him against his brother, him against the world because others didn't matter. Others weren't orphans, abandoned and surviving a murderous sibling. But everyone he didn't care about dragged him back over and over.

Sides mattered because they couldn't be ignored, because he had one bullet, and was branded a criminal while forced in the middle of a war.

Without sides, how could he live on without enemies, now that his brother was dead? Now that everything he had felt and gone through only belonged to him and the people who loved him blindly? People, he didn't love back.

"In a war, there are bombs," Temari said slowly, shaking her head, "there are dead bodies and guns. But sides? There's no fence, Sergeant. No, us versus them. There's only our own stupid useless weak skin," she barred her teeth, and the urge to hit the bars in front of her overcame her.

"You're wrong."

Temari felt like she was growing into a monster, watching him and his placid face, his charcoal eyes cold one moment and blazing, the next. It was as if each word they exchanged was poisoning the vow she had made to herself. She wished she could shed her skin, peeling layers of lies and truths in front of him until he knew it too; how little mattered. The world shaped them without their consent. There were dead brothers and alive ones and there was no way to tell which was which.

No, Temari would save her brothers and get out.

Or lose herself and die.

"You're no hero," Sasuke sneered as if reading her thoughts.

Temari startled, her teal eyes finally staring back into his black ones.

And she shuddered.

He pressed a page against the bars.

It was a picture of her, taken at the beginning of the war, and it stared back at her. Black and white younger Temari eased between the bars of her cell. Her cheeks were still round then, and her pose fierce.

Her brothers had their own pictures. They had hanged them above the stove at the beginning of the war. They had stained them over and over with scraps of food because they didn't understand the gravity and finality of the war. Soldiers ate better than peasants. Soldiers had a future, larger means.

At the beginning of the war, they were still together.

Nothing else mattered.

"Double-agents aren't heroes," Sasuke said it slowly, as if he were bored and his mind was already drifting away. "They're just foolish."

Save the remaining pieces of herself and get out, Temari vowed silently. She clenched her teeth staring at the thick file he had left open on his chair. Pages rustled, drifted to the cemented floor. And there was her name in his mouth. Her real name.

"Temari," Sasuke said and smirked, knowing full well she had expected a file under her fake identity, the one she had stolen from a corpse.

But he was better than that.

"You're just a foolish little girl who got caught."

He didn't pick the loose pages up.

He left, and when the heavy metallic door slammed behind him, she staggered back to the back of her cell, alone, again, in the darkness of her prison.

* * *

"Also no gun today? Hm, what could it mean?"

Temari passed her arms through the bars of her cell, her elbows resting on the cold metal of the lock. She cocked her head on the side, observing him with a mocking smile. Her fingertips brushed against the keyhole.

"Who did you kill, Uchiha?"

Swiftly, Sasuke pulled a knife out of his uniform and held it against her throat. They stared at each other, her smile slipping, her eyes widening. He stood still, muscles tensed, leaning in until they were inches apart. He stared at her cracked dry lips until his gaze flickered up, anchoring itself in her veiled eyes.

"Criminals are given one bullet and yes, I'm a criminal," Sasuke whispered, "so do you think I follow the rules? Do you think Headquarters will storm my office to find the tools I use on prisoners? I told you," his mouth twitched but his tone remained even, "there are two sides to this cell and you are never making it out."

For the first time, Temari struggled to hang on to her mission, because he was too near, invading her cell without stepping in, crushing her windpipe, without pressing his knife too deep into her skin. She almost waited for the biting pain, the gurgling sound of blood coming from inside her.

_For once_.

For once, it should be her blood.

Her eyes flickered to his steady hand, and she could imagine him carrying her head.

"Sit down on your cot," Sasuke ordered, stiffly nodding toward the mattress behind her.

His knife disappeared again in his uniform in a dull flash of steel. Temari stepped back to her mat, hating herself for hearing her pants, her deafening heartbeat, useless pathetic sounds filling her head until she wanted to scream.

She was still scared to die.

She told herself it was for her brothers. They needed her alive, but her body was treacherous, her mind rebelling, wanting to break out. Give up and save her own skin.

Temari twisted her trembling hands, firmly crushed the bulging muscles betraying her, until she remembered her blood was theirs.

Her hands stilled.

"Did you kill your brothers?" Sasuke pressed, and she almost bent over the punch.

Temari paled, her face now sunken in the timid light.

She caught herself too late, and he watched it all, dissecting her reaction piece by bloody piece as if she had killed them herself. His voice constricted, echoing far away, as she felt heads and heads crushing her, dripping blood at her feet.

"There's no record of their capture. Their files said they died in action."

Temari repeated it quietly to herself, staring up at the grey wall. Her head knocked back on the wall in tiny jolts. Gaara had red hair and Kankuro always laughed too loudly, carelessly, lively. The moisture of the wall clung to the nape of her neck, and it was her only anchor. The rest was drifting, reeling in her mind.

"Maybe someone lied to you and told you they were alive and if you did this... Become a spy and come here– they would be set free. Maybe you made another sort of deal... Just tell me with whom."

Temari felt detached, floating, just like she had been taught in her emotional training. Keep the demons at bay and wear your enemies in your heart. Kill your humanity, kill your enemy, but keep your heart. Stay alive.

Just enough for the next kill.

"Are you sure they're dead?" her voice fell raw, dead, and Temari wondered if she had uttered the words at all. Or if she had shouted them. Or if it was someone else inhabiting her because her lips were frozen, and there were too many visible pieces for him to pick up, dissect, and digest.

Sasuke didn't answer.

He pulled the chair back, his back now to her as he stood. He pulled the heads of her brothers back with him, and she was left with nothing but silence.

A sharp click, a door closing.

Temari pushed her fists against her teeth, scrapping the skin of her knuckles, until she tasted grim, the salt of her muffled tears, and the sound of her never-ending screams. Her jaw ached, searing pain making her muscles twitch, but she kept pushing.

* * *

Sasuke threw her file on his desk, his soft pants too loud to his ears.

He could barely breathe.

The light flickered above him, swimming in the soft humid air filtering through the narrow windows near the ceiling before stabilizing. Rats. They were all trapped rats living underground in the Information headquarters.

Sasuke had once given up everything to pursue his brother. Before the beginning of the war, he fell in step with criminals who paved his way with guns and blood and his revenge grew, intoxicating, until he lost himself and sat in his brother's apartment waiting for him. His first kill, his only kill, was his brother, a double-agent who delayed the war by killing their parents, conspirators. Once he pulled the trigger, he was trapped in a war tearing him apart, emptying him of everything that made him human.

At the beginning of the war, Sasuke was caught. He remembered laughing, testing the weight of his cuffs, leaning in for the sound they made every time he moved, metallic sounds that buried the voice of soldiers questioning him. He wore the irony of his arrest inside out, for everyone to see. He was always surprised they found him, a man without humanity, without hope.

After all, how could a man who lived for revenge leave physical traces? Wasn't he supposed to cease existing the second his revenge was accomplished?

He remembered asking himself, what was he still doing there, questioned, at the police station. Where was his rest, his peace?

His brother had died, but it changed nothing.

They showed him his prints, irrefutable evidence, and they all grounded him, revealed his physical presence in some way. A corpse that left traces. Were all men like him, half-dead, lost, trapped in endless grief, he remembered asking himself.

But, where was his peace?

Now, Sasuke stared at her file, his mind still nagging at him. Temari had two brothers while he only had one. She didn't slip yet, but she almost did when he mentioned her brothers. And he didn't see anger. He didn't taste revenge on the back of his throat. He saw love. Hurt. Hope.

Sasuke had always acted out of hatred for his brother. He couldn't imagine how anyone could act out of love and survive. And thrive. And come to his camp, let themselves get imprisoned and risk everything. He wished he could throw the file, spread it across the room and burn it all. Friends. Family. He had none. The friends he did have, he hated. The one family he did have, he killed.

'_Foolish_,' Sasuke decided as he unbuttoned the collar of his uniform with rigid, cold fingers. A foolish woman playing the hero.

Above his head, the light still moved, drawing Temari's photograph in contrast then pulling it back in muted darkness.

* * *

The third time Sasuke came to her, he didn't bother with dragging the chair in front her. There was no ritual and it almost made Temari flinch. There should be steps, a tight set of rules for moments before an execution. She was lying on her mat, her arms spread out, her legs bent and twisted, curled up against her abdomen.

"Let me tell you a story," she said softly to him, to the darkness. Lost words, abandoned words for all the rage she can feel building up, ripping through her. Her life for her brothers', only if it was as easy.

"I don't think there's time-" he started, annoyed.

"The boy is a criminal," Temari interrupted, "but he likes to pretend he has repented. He likes to pretend he has changed sides, so he can have a second chance."

Sasuke crumbled his report, laughing out loud, a dry uncomfortable eruption that exposed him. He pretended nothing. He was forced into repentance. He was given a gun with a bullet, him a criminal, a brother killer, once more soldiers were needed.

"His brother is also a criminal who laughs it all off."

'_You don't know anything!_' Sasuke yelled inwardly.

The rest of him was cold, silent, sullen, because he wished there was repentance, forgiveness. He wished he hadn't pulled the trigger only if it had meant he could still be friends with Naruto and Sakura without hiding in the Information headquarters. He could have been normal, revenge-less, a boy who grew into a man. With friends. With family. Never lonely, never feeling like a broken puppet mirroring anything that made others human.

"Then, there's the sister," she paused looking side-way at him.

Had Sasuke not broken her a little, Temari wouldn't need to offer her brothers in exchange for freedom. She knew this. Her lips felt dry under her tongue as she watched him. The form he had in his hand bounced, balled-up, beaten, at his feet. His eyes grew darker, swallowing her, stealing her breath.

"She tried keeping them in line," her voice broke again.

This time there was nothing but fury buried in the shadow of his face, creasing his cheeks and forehead until she saw nothing but his eyes. Again and again, his dark eyes and his dark hair, belonging to this place, this moment, without light, without hope.

"Family breaks you when you try to keep it together, doesn't it?"

Sasuke gripped the bar of her cell, and she watched him, ready to flinch, ready to yell, because his touch burnt her fingers. He could snap them, she thought. He could snap them, break them, one by one. Instead, he held on, and so did she.

They hadn't been touched in years.

They held on.

He squeezed her hand and let it all go, took it all back. Her. The cell. The light. Her fleeting hope.

He ripped himself from her.

He turned his back on her.

She closed her eyes, a rigid smirk curling up her lips.

Now, he was broken too.

* * *

Sergeant Sasuke Uchiha always came thrice to his prisoners, but he kept coming back to her.

_'What changed?'_ he asked himself, his skin moist and cold, and his mind, for the first time, agitated, restless. _What changed?_ He held his head between his hands, the collar of his uniform unclasped, his glass of bad rum long forgotten on his desk.

He felt himself wavering, spiralling away from the stiff rules, and the stiffer uniform.

_What changed?_

Sasuke had never cared about others' brothers. Others' family. Or friends. Or lovers. He was alone. He was the only one he needed, the only one he could rely on.

People left.

People died.

People were drafted.

People weren't safe. They were both sheep and wolves.

But Temari stirred something in him he didn't understand; guilt, fear, fatigue... All combined, all destructive. He kept being pulled back towards her and asking about her brothers. For once, he needed answers for himself. His reports were incomplete, abandoned, delayed until he could report that he had seen her thrice.

Sasuke had no regrets, but he had chosen isolation, the Information headquarters, where he would have to see Sakura or Naruto again. He had chosen the uniform of the information men and worn it like his only skin.

A spy would be without allegiance like him. And they would mirror each other's choice even if her brothers were alive, and his was dead.

But nothing changed.

Nothing could _ever_ change.

* * *

They couldn't sleep.

The building shook, dust slid off the walls, billowing in the thickening air. Sasuke rubbed his hands slowly, feeling each callous, each scar, reminding he was alive even if outside, the world was ending, scorched and gutted every time an opus fell.

Her face gleamed, pale, tilted back toward the narrow barred window. Restlessly, Temari thought of wind and wheels, holding her knees closer to her chest. She hanged onto the colour of the sand drifting around Gaara's face when he was a child. She hanged onto the colour of Kankuro's hand carving wood.

"Are you afraid?" his words held no power, no impact.

'_Always._'

Temari merely shrugged, frowning, unfolding herself, one limb at the time, until her feet touched the ground. She could feel the oscillation of the earth, grumbles that amplified and gnawed at every foundation of the war. At every foundation of her.

Bombs shouldn't reach her, she told herself quietly trying to relax her clenched fists.

Death threats shouldn't reach her.

If it was true... If they really were dead...

"Why are you here?" Temari snapped icily above the words spinning in her mind. "Shouldn't you hide in a shelter or something?"

She squinted at the darkness. His pale face floated, glowing with the same red and orange that severed and detonated into the night. Temari suppressed a shudder.

"Hn."

Sasuke stood up, approaching the bars of her cell, the rusty chair squeaking against the concrete floor. For once, his notepad wasn't with him. His sleeves were rolled up and her eyes drifted to the charred muscles of his forearms, following the curves of his tattoo. 156. Inmate 156.

"I'm always here," he whispered. "You're always in my cage." Red eyes flashed, reflecting the war outside, the one inside, nested between them.

"Oh, are you?" she said dryly with a savage smile.

He gritted his teeth together, and she laughed, the pieces of her broken heart screeching in her chest.

"That tattoo tells me you once belonged here, and now you're on the other side, as you put it." She smiled, ice and carelessness, and with enough hope to make him flinch. "So, you see? I'm not worried."

"You're a killer."

"So are you."

"Just tell me who gives your orders and I may tell you something you want to know." He leaned closer, and she followed the movement of his lips, her ears ringing from the bombs and the deafening sound of her heartbeat. "Something about your brothers."

"I'm on your side," she breathed out thinly.

He pressed his forehead against the warm bar, avidly dissecting her blank face.

"Don't you want to know if Kankuro still plays with dolls?"

Temari threw her weight back and aimed her fists at his face, her nails tearing at her palms, her knuckles trembling when they grazed only air. The bars of the cell stopped her hand, solid and impenetrable. She panted, her hand throbbing and when she pulled it back, she felt the abrasion rooted in her skin, leaking to her head. Quietly, Sasuke unrolled his sleeves and buttoned his uniform back.

The bombs kept exploding.

The world kept dying.

Temari kept her arm in front of her, pressed to her chest. She felt the back of her cot against her shins, her jaw clenched.

"You said..." she swallowed thickening saliva, trembling, "you said they were..."

"I came here, because the night is when people break," he admitted stoically. "It's easier to bombard or raid when the darkness hides you. Elementary strategy."

"You need me or you would've already killed me," Temari shouted angrily.

Impassively, he put the chair back against the wall.

"I don't need you," he whispered and his words etched themselves in her core. _Don't need you_. _Don't need you_. Her eyes widened and she tasted blood at the back of her throat. What about her brothers? Had they ever need her? Had it all been in vain?

"I just need the truth. I just need a name," he added, but Temari didn't hear him.

She was frozen, miles away, years apart, in a field filled with windmills and strong gusts of wind.

Dead or alive?

They needed her, didn't they?

* * *

Temari was only a pool of shadows and stiff movements.

"One day, you'll come and it won't be about my brothers or my past." Temari's back was to him and Sasuke was leaning against the wall.

There was only one candle lit next to him. There was no more bombs, but the main access to central had been cut off, the generators wired back to the hospital and more strategic holds. There were only a handful of soldiers in the building now.

He wouldn't tell her that though.

"Maybe this is today."

His jaw worked. He craved her fear and anger, anything that would justify him coming back to her that would have had nothing to do with him. His needs. He should go, he kept telling himself. He knew she was spy and yet, there was no report. He had signed no release form for her to be transferred or executed.

"I don't think so," Temari laughed, and Sasuke winced at the way her laughter shook her whole, unrestrained, unleashed, yet icy and gritting.

He didn't understand the way she contained so much, drawing her features cold and sharp, while, underneath, her emotions raged on. '_Because she lies_,' a voice shouted in his mind. '_Because you're a fucking fool. This is the last time! It needs to be._'

He shook his head, brushing the hair out of his eyes. Outside, they heard muffled explosions. The front lost yards today. Yesterday. Every day.

They were dying rats, soldiers with carved out souls.

They didn't exist.

"Just tell me what you want in exchange for a name," Sasuke said quietly.

"Just tell me about who you lost," Temari smirked.

The room was always crowded with their brothers, their weaknesses sitting between them, breaking them against each other.

"Who said I lost someone?" Sasuke forced a breath out when she sat up glaring at him.

"Oh, please," she growled back, a purr that thinly echoed inside him. "You stink of loss."

"A name," he snapped. "Who sent you?"

She smiled toothily.

"I have no name to give."

There was no way out of family ties, no way out of their back-and-forth's because they hated their brothers as much as they loved them and it left little room for little else.

"You're a fool for giving up yourself for your brothers," Sasuke said quietly. "They aren't coming back."

Temari snorted and crossed her arms over her chest.

"You don't understand..."

And he erupted, his mind assaulted with images of his dying brother.

"WHAT IS IT I DON'T UNDERSTAND?"

He kicked the chair back.

They stilled, panting; her, watching him until she softened, and him holding his head because he had sounded animalistic. Wounded, and lost, and desperate. Like a little boy. Stumbling as if drunk, he turned on his heels. His mind was racing, his heart exploding in his chest with each beat. The sound of a machine gun buried in his hatred.

"It's not about whether they are coming back or not," Temari whispered, and he faltered, his eyes wild and petrified. "It's about not abandoning them. It's about saving them."

"I killed my brother." His voice echoed stretched, then thinned by the distance. The past, his past, and the imperceptible way she severed again as she repeated it to herself.

"I killed my brother, even if he had already killed our entire family."

Sasuke forced himself to take another step away from her. He felt his body stiffening. He guessed he understood never abandoning family, even as a child, even if he had to give up his brother. Even if it was actually his brother who gave him up.

"It brought no one back, and I'm not sorry."

Sasuke almost shivered, feeling the cold sweat dripping down his face, gathering on his lower back.

He would never reach repentance because he wasn't sorry. He regretted who he had needed to become. He regretted that hatred isolated him, and he could never love freely like Sakura and Naruto could. However, he never regretted pressing the trigger, the gun cackling loud in hand. A sparkle that ignited everything else, burned away his past, and his brother who fell backward.

Sasuke turned away from her paler face, her parted trembling lips.

"I was wrong, you don't stink of loss," Temari breathed out, her voice rough. "You stink of guilt."

His fingers curled around the door knob with difficulty, his keys bouncing as he opened it and exited the cells.

His steps resonated clipped in the hallway, hitting the floor faster and faster. When Sasuke reached his office, he was suffocating. He slammed the door, tore her file up until there was nothing but shreds. Until he was nothing but shreds.

Ruins.

Like her.

* * *

When Sasuke came to her cell the next evening, the door was open, uncomfortably immobile, and the metal glistened faintly in the shadows. All traces of her had disappeared. Major Ibiki Morino was sitting on the rusty chair, watching him carefully.

"I let her go. The war is over. This is all you need to know, Sergeant."

Major Morino stood up heavily even though Sasuke knew it was all an act. The major was swift and silent with the ones he tortured. He forced his body to tower over others with stiffness and uneasiness because it allowed him later to crush his prisoner's hopes. He even smiled and made them at ease before cutting through them until there was nothing left. Flesh and bones, and intangible truth.

"She was a spy," Sasuke said automatically and as his superior officer brushed by him, he felt his laughter vibrating through him.

"Of course, she was. They all are."

* * *

The war was over, but Temari needed two last kills.

"I'm looking for Dr Kabuto."

The vivid light drew the man's back in crisp lines. The medical equipment in the room gleamed, sharp and beeping. The room was too clean for war hospital, Temari thought.

"You're here for a check-up?" he hummed and reached for the knob by the sink.

The water rushed, and it was as strong, as poignant as the sound of rusty wind mills turning and turning. Because she remembered his voice, the soothing tone that made her trust him when he promised Orochimaru could bring her brothers back.

She should have believed in monsters the moment she signed up for the war.

She approached him, one hand on her pouch, the second brushing the metal of her gun.

Kabuto never turned around. Temari still remembered the shape of his neck, the curve of his back. Wide open.

"Sergeant Uchiha sent me," she said and licked her cracked bleeding lips.

"Ah. More clean-up to do then?"

Temari took off her gloves.

"Something like that."

First the water.

Temari cocked her head on the side, watching the doctor wash his hands carefully, still humming to himself.

Then, the kill.

Kabuto still scrubbed his hands. Temari raised her arm, her finger already pulling the trigger.

The bullet sprayed blood across the clean room, and the body brutally hit the sink before stumbling back. His hand cupped the blood pouring from his wound.

His glasses cracked on the floor.

He looked up at her with unfocused glassy eyes, spitting blood. A look of recognition, a hiss that could have belonged to a snake. Then, nothing.

"It didn't bring anyone back, like he said," she muttered to herself, and her rough voice choked, gurgled.

Nothing. _Nothing_.

No one.

She shook his death off her. She walked away shoulders squared like they had taught her years ago alongside her brothers.

There should be no hesitation before the next kill.

They had eaten away her humanity even before they took her brothers, so she walked through the hospital toward the exit, her mind reeling around Orochimaru's whereabouts.

Even if it couldn't bring them back.

* * *

Sasuke revisited every word, every look they had exchanged.

Temari had won the game, but his side had won the war.

And the war ended without echo, the deserted world swallowing back the fumes, the earth draining the blood. It had expected it to be loud, devastating, because what was he supposed to do? Without death, without torture and prisoners, he didn't know who he was.

Then, there was her.

'_Why did she kill that doctor? Why? WHY!'_

'_WHAT IS IT THAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND?!'_

Sasuke stood behind the crowd of soldiers celebrating under the open sky. Old friends, family members found each other, for once out of the trenches. A few couples kissed or held hands, their heads tilted toward the sky.

Sasuke leaned back against a tree, hidden from view. He watched Naruto sought Sakura out as he had always done, without prompt, yet briskly. Not hoping, simply knowing she was somewhere waiting for him.

His jaw clenched, Sasuke shifted his weight from one foot to the other in the chilly breeze. Even the wind seemed breathless, still. It carried nothing but silence.

He turned away from them, heading back to the temporary headquarters.

Sasuke hoped, expected Temari to appear again. He offered her some truths and two lies. And she put a bullet through the rest. She had left a body behind, and he watched it all, so he would remember how she played him. It hurt, numbed him even if they weren't family, friends.

Nothing.

They were nothing, and he was scared to feel a yearning for her, this hope to find her her. And caring for her. He was terrified of caring for anyone. He never wanted to expect someone to come back to him.

Sasuke had always thought he had nothing left to lose. Until she left. Until she betrayed him, and he couldn't betray her. And he didn't know how to react even if he was used to being the one left behind.

* * *

Temari couldn't fulfill her revenge.

Orochimaru was arrested by troops, and she never squinted to figure out the logo on their uniform. She walked away, heartbroken, soulless. Near the front, there was a destroyed forest where friends and family met after the war, leaning against trees and lying on the ground of burnt grass and muddled crooked sprouts. She knew there was no one left to wait for.

So she never stopped moving.

She left towns after towns, her loss dangling, unreachable, a mirage at end of the road ahead of her.

She was too weary to feel alive.

She worried letters containing her brothers' death certificates would find their ways to her.

She worried Sergeant Sasuke would track her down and ask for answers.

His voice followed her, haunting whispers demanding that she explained what he didn't understand. The two of them, children who were raised by bombs and drawn guns, they understood nothing, she now knew. They had never known any other time, any other world than one made of fences and prisons and murders. And lost brothers.

Temari killed a man even if the war had ended. Out of habit. Out of hope. And he killed his brother. Out of hatred.

She hoped they were headed in different directions.

She hoped.

She hoped.

* * *

Sasuke Uchiha waited in front of a heavy barred door in the prison of Konoha

Even months after the end of the war, he never returned his uniform. Instead, he roamed the cells, the secrets of the war, as if it had never ended. Naruto, Sakura... They all moved on, and he remained behind.

Unforgiving and cold, and still aching, he still wore his uniform, still answered to orders.

He had no home to return to.

His finger rolled a dime in his pockets as he stared ahead. Heads or tails, hadn't their relationship been anything else? A twisted roll of dice, a dime thrown between them.

Temari had led him to a body which had led him to Orochimaru and the mutants, and now here.

Because brothers were meant to return home even if it was to share a twisted tale of massacre and love.

The red light above the door flashed three times, then made a high-pitched sound. The lock's mechanism grated and winced, rusty metal against rusty metal, as the first door opened.

Sasuke stepped in between the doors, then waited again. He stopped at the red line on the floor. The second door in front of him was heavier, never to be opened for the prisoners.

Around him, inmates rattled their chains on the floor, on their bars, on the walls. Sasuke ignored them. He used to be among them, caged, but his time in prison had been silent, his chains weighing him down, never clicking. And he never wanted to be let out.

Now, he was in uniform, still gambling against Temari: some truths and two lies. His fingers stilled on the dime as an inmate approached the second door, his back hunched. Roughly, he grabbed at the bars on the door, but his head remained down.

"Is there only him?" he asked at the guard standing back.

All torturers asked questions they already knew the answer to out of habit.

"No, sir. The other caused a stir, so we had to lock him back up," the guard replied.

Sasuke studied the prisoner. His red hair hung low in his eyes, almost greyish in the dampened light. The prisoner finally looked up and his eyes were as limpid as his sister's.

"Gaara Sabaku... Let me tell you the story of your sister."

* * *

Her apartment's door was ajar, voices rising and falling in stiff rhythms.

Temari crouched down, her hand feeling for the wall behind her. She pressed her back to the grimy war, and her heart hammered against the back of her throat. Her panic stilled the blood in her veins. She carefully dropped the grocery bag on the dirty floor of the hallway, her movements flickering in and out of existence with the dangling light above her.

She reached for her waistband where her gun touched her skin.

She slipped back into the cadaver she had once been, so easily slipped back into the spy. And her body reacted, and her mind was silent.

A hand closed around her wrist and Temari whipped around, her knife in her other hand. The blade stopped inches from his throat. She gave a small cry, panting, when the gun was torn away from her and the blade spun out of reach.

"You!"

Slowly, she raised her chin, her lips pressed together because his eyes were burning through her, demanding, just as she knew they would be.

Then, Temari struck.

Sasuke didn't blink, leaping back to avoid her swift kick.

"Stop!" he growled, and she paused, dumbfounded.

Wasn't this how they were supposed to meet again, with raised fists and spilled blood?

Temari cleaved the air again, her fist caught in his.

"Stop," Sasuke repeated more softly, their hands, entangled, shaking between them.

He forced her hand down.

His other hand worked fast around her gun. Sasuke let the cartridges fall one by one on the carpeted floor. Temari flinched at every falling bullet, as if they were piercing her skin, drilling their way to her heart.

He grasped air.

She panted.

They both looked down at the knife on the floor, their postures tensed. Her fingers twitched, hesitating, so did his.

They were killers first and foremost.

"Your brothers are inside," he said abruptly, and he held up his hand.

She slapped it away.

"You're lying," she sneered, paling.

"No, I'm not. Listen."

Temari lowered her fists, involuntary tremors breaking her apart, gutting her. She shook her head. She couldn't recognize their voices. They sounded unused, they were rasps and croaks.

Sasuke sat on his heels in front of her, watching her carefully.

He tried to reach for her again, but he stopped midway. This wasn't his family. He waited for the blow to pass, his eyes trailing on her tears and widened eyes and working mouth. It was her turn to demand, demand, and demand in a broken whisper, "Why? Why? Why?"

"Because you can't break family ties. We are enemies, but you can't break family ties," his voice was low but clipped, hard, dented steel, and he clicked like an empty gun. "I don't understand how and why, but I lied, and you killed a man."

Sasuke stepped away from her.

The voices grew silent in her apartment.

"They need you," he added, he didn't know why, but her face lit up, and the ravages of the war and loss faded away.

His heart thudded violently inside him. He gulped, he searched for more words he could say to her. He shook his head in the silence that followed, her glistening eyes on the ajar door of her apartment. Nothing else came to him.

He stepped back again, but she reached across the bullets and her knife, her hand gripping his uniform.

"The war is over," she said soberly, and she stood up, facing him.

"Yes..." he nodded staring at her hand on him. "I'll come back," he added quietly; he finally had a place to come back to.

She nodded.

She let him go.

She hoped.

And she hoped.

Temari entered her apartment.

* * *

_**You can find other stand-alone oneshots in the series: ShikaIno in The Messenger, and NejiTen in The Sniper.**_

_**I have other oneshots planned:**_

_**-"The Nurse", a KibaHina fic, **_

_**-"The Prisoner", a GaaSaku fic,**_

_**-"The Civilian", a ShinoHanabi fic, and**_

_**-"The Mutants", a SuiKarin fic, where Orochimaru and Kabuto's misdeeds will be more explained. **_

_**Anyway, stay tuned if you're interested! :D**_

_**Thank you for reading! Please take the time to let me know what you thought. ^_^**_


End file.
